What the Heck is SEO? Series Post 4: Content and Headers

In our last post in this series, we talked about the importance of meta tags when it comes to SEO. In today's post, we're going to get to the heart of the matter - content.

So back to our story in the airport bookstore...

You've got two books in your hand. The titles caught your eye, and the descriptions look equally appealing. How do you decide? Most people at this point will open up the books and scan the content - maybe look at the headings and a paragraph here and there to see if the content of the book catches their attention. Google and Bing do the same thing, except they read and save (index) every word of text on your site!

You may have heard the phrase, "Content is King", but what does that mean? It means that the actual text content of your website is given by far the most weight out of all the factors Google and Bing consider when deciding where to rank your page in their search results!

"The actual text content of your website is given by far the most weight out of all the factors Google and Bing consider when deciding where to rank your page in their search results!"

So what are the secrets to writing good content? They're actually much simpler than you might think:

• Your content needs to contain your keywords. If you want your website to rank on the first page of Google and Bing for the phrase "Dallas wedding photographer", and the text on your page does not contain the words "Dallas wedding photographer", it's probably not going to happen!
• Your content needs to be well written. You can't just repeat your keywords over and over. They need to be sprinkled throughout your content in a natural way. 

Note: There is a metric called keyword density, which measures the number of times a given keyword or phrase appears as a percentage of all other words on a page. Don't worry about it - it's an obsolete metric, and there has never been a set standard for it anyway. If you give a draft of your content to your grandmother or a 10 year-old and they can read it and then tell you what the page was about, I assure you Google and Bing can do the same!

• You need to use variations of your keywords throughout your content. If you're trying to rank for "Dallas wedding photographer", then sprinkle in words like photography and Texas and bridal, where appropriate.

Note: For those of you who just have to know the nitty gritty details, this stems from a search algorithm called 'latent semantic analysis', in which search engines look for semantically related words in addition to your keywords as a signal that strengthens their confidence in your content.

"The secrets to writing good content are much simpler than you might think!" 

Header Tags

Your keywords should also be used in your header tags. Remember in high school when you had to write that dreaded "research paper"? Before you even started writing the paper, you had to turn in an "outline" of your paper to your teacher, right? 

Header tags are very similar to an outline. They are designated by HTML markup and ranked according to importance, as in H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, etc. Accordingly, header tags should be used to break up your content into meaningful sections. It only makes sense that if your page is about Dallas wedding photography, then the sections of the page should be broken down into concepts or ideas that are related to the theme of the page, right? For example:

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Dallas Wedding Photography (this is an H1 tag)

Susie Smith is an award winning wedding photographer in Dallas, Texas...

Engagement Portraits (this is an H2 tag)

Susie offers engagement portraits throughout the Dallas area as part of all of her packages...

Actual Engagement Photo Sessions  (this is an H3 tag)

Click on the links below to see some of Susie's recent engagement portraits...

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So it stands to reason that Google and Bing will look closely at your header tags when trying to determine what your page is about. Thus, you should use them appropriately (and sparingly). Generally, I recommend having only one H1 tag per page, leaving no doubt in Google and Bing's "eyes" as to what each page is about.

If you've read the other posts in this series, by now you're probably starting to see a pattern and realize that consistency is one of the keys to search engine optimization. Your keywords need to be sprinkled consistently throughout your title tag, meta tags, content, and headers.

"Consistency is one of the keys to search engine optimization." 

But there is one other place where your keywords play a crucial role in what Google and Bing think of your website. Stay tuned for the next few posts in this series (or better yet, subscribe to my blog and get them delivered to your inbox), which focus on one of the most misunderstood and misapplied principles of SEO - link-building!